Dear
Members, Alumni, & Friends of the James Scholar Advisory & Leadership
Team:
This Sunday
evening (9/27), residents of North America will be able to view a total eclipse
of the Full Harvest Moon! In honor of this auspicious occasion, I’d like to
share with you two poems about the Moon from ancient Greece and a link to a
proto-science-fiction story about the Moon from medieval Japan!
LUNAR POEMS
FROM ANCIENT GREECE – INTRODUCTION
The annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are
recurring themes throughout world literature. The Orphic poets – a guild of
ancient Greek philosopher-bards named after their legendary founder, Orpheus –
celebrated the changing of the seasons, the wonders of the natural world, and
their lofty ideals in poetic chants, several dozen of which were preserved in
written form after centuries of oral transmission. In the poetic forms of their
prescientific age (ca. 1000-500 BCE), the Orphic poets chose to personify the
forces of Nature, the celestial orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain
how and why the natural world and the human social order function in the ways
that they do.
The Homeric school of poetry, founded perhaps by Homer himself (fl. ca. 8th
century BCE), and carried forward by his disciples and successors for many
generations, also produced poems that celebrated heroic deeds and the
mysterious forces of Nature, many of which were personified as divine or
semidivine beings. In both of the following poems, we can learn how the ancient
Greeks perceived the Moon, not as a dead rock in space, but as a living entity
(or as a celestial orb ruled by a divine guardian – in this case, Artemis [in
Greek] or Diana [in Latin]).
Orphic
Hymn #8: TO THE
MOON
(The
FUMIGATION from AROMATICS)
Hear,
divine queen, diffusing silver light,
Bull-horned
and wandering through the gloom of Night.
With stars
surrounded, and with circuit wide
Night’s
torch extending, through the heavens you ride:
Female and
Male with borrowed rays you shine,
And now
full-orbed, now tending to decline.
Mother of
ages, fruit-producing Moon,
Whose amber
orb makes Night’s reflected noon:
Lover of
horses, splendid, queen of Night,
All-seeing
power bedecked with starry light.
Lover of
vigilance, the foe of strife,
In peace
rejoicing, and a prudent life:
Fair lamp
of Night, its ornament and friend,
Who gives
to Nature’s works their destined end.
Queen of
the stars, all-wife Diana hail!
Decked with
a graceful robe and shining veil;
Come,
blessed, divine, prudent, starry, bright,
Come
moony-lamp with chaste and splendid light,
Shine on
these sacred rites with prosperous rays,
And pleased
accept your suppliant’s mystic praise.
Homeric
Hymn #32: TO THE MOON
[1] And next, sweet voiced Muses, daughters of Zeus, well-skilled in song, tell
of the long-winged Moon. From her immortal head a radiance is shown from heaven
and embraces earth; and great is the beauty that arises [5] from her shining
light. The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her
rays beam clear, whensoever the bright Moon having bathed her lovely body in
the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her
strong-necked, shining team, [10] drives on her long-maned horses at full
speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her
beams shine brightest as she increases. So she is a sure token and a sign to
mortals.
[15] Once [Zeus] the son of Cronos was joined with her in love; and she
conceived and bore a daughter Pandia, exceedingly lovely amongst the immortals.
Hail, white-armed divine, bright Moon, mild, bright-tressed queen! And now I
will leave you and sing the glories of men half-divine, whose deeds minstrels,
[20] the servants of the Muses, celebrate with lovely lips.
From
medieval Japan comes the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, also known as
the Tale of the Moon Princess. You can find a version of this
proto-science-fiction story here:
Happy
Harvest Moon weekend! :)
Rob
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